August is the month everyone assumes Le Perche shuts down. Half of it does. The other half turns out to be the busiest the calendar gets all year.

Here is what July did to us first, and then the three things actually worth your evenings this month.

What July did

July got hot in a way Le Perche does not really go in for.

On the 11th the area went to code red for heat, the highest warning there is, and stayed there four days at around 36°C. In a place built out of stone and slate, designed to hold on to whatever warmth it can get, that is a very different thing from 36°C somewhere with air conditioning and a pool.

Then came the rules, no outdoor sport through the afternoon and no drinking in public places. You could watch the whole town rearrange itself around them: everyone out shopping at eight in the morning, back indoors by ten, shutters closed, waiting it out. Bellême's fireworks were called off, and so were those in town after town across Normandy. The ground had dried out to the point where setting off fireworks over it stops being a celebration and becomes a fire. Nobody wanted to risk a hillside, or tie up fire crews who already had plenty on. Entirely sensible, and still a real shame. Then the next day the motocross went the same way. Loud, dusty, gloriously unsubtle, well attended, and called off.

We will admit to taking the fireworks personally. The evening of the 13th is our favourite night of the year, and not because they are big, because they are not. It is the torchlit procession winding up through the streets, the walk to the Champ de Foire with half the town, and the dance that runs on afterwards for anyone still standing. It is the night Bellême is most completely itself.

Two of the best days of the local year, gone inside forty-eight hours.

If you want the practical side of surviving weather like that, we wrote it up in Keeping Cool in Le Perche. This is the other half of the story: what the heat does to the diary.

What July gave back

Then the warning lifted, and the area made it up to us in the most Perche way available, which is to say with vide-greniers.

The weekend afterwards was enormous. Nocé on Sunday the 19th was one of the biggest we have been to all year, big enough to properly lose each other in, unhurried, and with genuinely good deals. The Saturday after that, at the vide-grenier that runs alongside the village fête at La Chapelle-Fortin, we finally scored a lawn mower after weeks of looking. One field, sorted before ten in the morning, grass mown in the afternoon.

That is the trade Le Perche makes in high summer. The official events are fragile. The improvised ones are not.

What closes

August closure here is not a slow fade. It is a switch.

Family businesses shut for two or three weeks and do not apologise for it. The staff are the family. There is nobody to cover, so the door closes, the sign goes up, and everyone heads for the coast or the in-laws or simply stops. Fermeture annuelle, closed for the year's holiday, on a sheet of A4 taped inside the glass and curling at the corner by the second week. Sometimes there is a date to come back. Sometimes there is not.

Plan for it rather than around it. Check before you drive anywhere specific. Assume the small independent place is closed and be pleasantly surprised when it is not.

What closes in August is the shops, not the region.

What is on

Our calendar lists a little over 170 events across Le Perche this August. Three are worth building your month around.

Every Wednesday evening: the farm market

If you take one thing from this post, take this one.

Five until nine, every Wednesday through August, at Une Ferme du Perche near Mortagne. An organic farm growing over two hundred varieties of vegetable, a market by the pond, and long shared tables where you end up eating next to whoever sat down first.

Bread, cheese, cider, and the farm's own produce. Bring wine. Go hungry.

It remains our favourite standing appointment in Le Perche.

Sunday 9 August: Bellême

Vide-greniers and brocante right through the streets, all on the same day, and open to anyone who wants a stall.

This is the big one. The town gives itself over to it and the whole hill fills up. If you go to a single event in Le Perche this August, go to this.

Arrive early. Take cash. Take a bag you have not filled yet.

Every week: the markets

The markets do not take August off. They are the one fixed point while everything else is shut, and in August they are at their best, because this is when the produce is actually there.

Which market on which day is the whole trick, and we set it out in The Best Markets in Le Perche: A Weekly Guide. Bellême on Saturday morning is the one to start with.

The useful conclusion

August in Le Perche asks you to invert your instincts.

Do not build the trip around restaurants. Build it around the calendar. Do not assume the shop is open. Assume the field is full. And check the day before rather than the week before, because a fête can vanish in a heatwave and a good one can be announced with four days' notice.

The month everything closes is also the month everything happens. Both are true, and only one of them is on a sign in a window.

The full calendar, filterable by type and town, is at duperchemode.com.